Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday November 29, 2010 @05:56AM
from the pressing-the-reset-button dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the aging process after experimental treatment developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies. 'What we saw in these animals was not a slowing down or stabilization of the aging process. We saw a dramatic reversal – and that was unexpected,' says Ronald DePinho, who led the study. The Harvard group focused on a process called telomere shortening where each time a cell divides, the telomeres are snipped shorter, until eventually they stop working and the cell dies or goes into a suspended state called 'senescence.' Researchers bred genetically manipulated mice that lacked an enzyme called telomerase that stops telomeres getting shorter causing the mice to age prematurely and suffer ailments, including a poor sense of smell, smaller brain size, infertility and damaged intestines and spleens. When the mice were given injections to reactivate the enzyme, it repaired the damaged tissues and reversed the signs of aging raising hope among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans – or at least to slow down the aging process."

For the most part, most of us live long enough. What is necessary is a substantial increase in the quality of our lives, not an increase in the length of it. If this treatment can return youthful vigor to our cells, that is something amazing. So far we've been relegated to using HGH or steroids or exercise and diet to control our aging process. However, the actual cellular aging progresses unhindered.

A treatment that does not require diet and exercise modifications is sorely needed.

And I want new coronary arteries. I had my first heart attack at age 28, had quintuple bypass surgery at age 33, and have just now, aged 42, had a third heart attack and a mere 7 stents installed. But I can't predict the weather!:)

Absolutely. Because quality of life is measured by how much you can eat in front of your computer without gaining weight.

Since most people nowadays spend their days that way out of necessity... yes. Quality of life is increased by having your body tolerate its normal usage. It lowers your quality of life that you have to spend several hours a week running in circles and lifting weights just to keep your muscle mass from disappearing and being replaced by useless fat tissue.

I suppose that this might violate some people's ideal of having to earn everything with sweat and blood, but hey: they're free to go jog in a snowstorm while I sit in front of my computer and eat potato chips.

You're a 20-something, aren't you? Come back and say that in another half a century. Life isn't all that "must-have" after a bunch of decades, even if you're in perfect health. The main problem is that after numerous years of life-experience, you start realizing what unbelievable sacks of shit most people truly are. If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too.

You're a 20-something, aren't you? Come back and say that in another half a century. Life isn't all that "must-have" after a bunch of decades, even if you're in perfect health. The main problem is that after numerous years of life-experience, you start realizing what unbelievable sacks of shit most people truly are. If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too.

We are already at the time when over population is a problem. While I'm not convinced on AGW, if we take it as existing, it is a problem that is directly caused by human over population. The world is still increasing in population, and it already is having problems with the amount that we have. Your nightmare longevity problem is here now.

Of course, suicide booths are not a bad idea, or a bad thing. What a wonderful world it would be if everybody got to live as long as they want, and just as long as

You're a 20-something, aren't you? Come back and say that in another half a century. Life isn't all that "must-have" after a bunch of decades, even if you're in perfect health. The main problem is that after numerous years of life-experience, you start realizing what unbelievable sacks of shit most people truly are. If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too.

No, I reckon I could find a way to avoid the Other Humans. For a while, anyway. Particularly age tends to teach survival skills. If you can stay in good physical shape at the same time, living in remote areas may be easier.

Plus imagine what would happen to the population if people started living forever. Living forever means being able to fuck forever. Of course mandatory sterilization would be impossible to implement, and of course the babies would want to live forever too, so we would truly see a population explosion like never before.

Plus imagine what would happen to the population if people started living forever. Living forever means being able to fuck forever. Of course mandatory sterilization would be impossible to implement, and of course the babies would want to live forever too, so we would truly see a population explosion like never before.

Assuming you know you are to live forever, what's the rush in breading children? At least until the Earth runs out of latex, you can keep fucking.

The main problem is that after numerous years of life-experience, you start realizing what unbelievable sacks of shit most people truly are. If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too.

If I'd know I'm to live forever, I might not get desperate and try to deal with all the sacks of shit in this world: you know, if you don't need to compromise (like: life is too short and you still want a home by the time your 35) then you might decide to just not compromise... what's the rush?

I'm hitting 30. My ambition to live forever is stronger now than it was when I was 15. All the shit given to me over the years hasn't had an impact. You sound like you want to die because it might become depressing. The simplest answer would be to move away and live in a different part of the world for 50 years. Imagine the opportunity to do that and really start life anew?

If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too.

Fair trade off, as far as I'm concerned. After all, we're all "THEM" from somebody else's point of view, right?

Besides, "they" aren't individual people, "they" are other people. Douchebags come in all ages, all groups and all eras. If you and your least favourite person both lived without ageing, would your life be improved by their death? No. You'd find someone else to take their place.

Learning to live with other human beings you dislike is a skill. I've met people who never learned it in the first p

Maybe. I'm only 32, but I would definitely take the live-forever serum if it was offered to me at this point. I'm already having to snip lower-priority things off my life goals list just due to lack of time. Maybe after I'm fluent in all spoken and written languages, fully understand current mathematics and number theory, fully grok current physics, have an encyclopedic knowledge of world history, have mastered cooking, dancing, martial arts, race driving, race flying, have built a computer by hand and written a POSIX-compatible operating system in its native assembly language, have built a car by hand and raced it, have visited every culture in the world and learned their customs well enough to interact freely with them... by the time I've done all those things I have a feeling I'll have thought of a list twice as long of things yet to do, but that sounds like at least three or four hundred years I'll need before I even get through the obvious stuff, and that's if I don't spend a large amount of time just relaxing with my family (which I will).

You seriously couldn't think of any fulfilling ways to spend a couple thousand years?

Ahh but you forget trauma and violent death. No one lives forever, even if your body was capable of it. Eventually you will see enough of your friends and loved ones die, and the world will change so much, that you will probably consider suicide.

You sure? After all, a lot of this so called laziness can stem from not being challenged enough, being unhappy with ones profession or work environment. In turn, lack of resources would be what makes you remain in that position. A vicious circle.

There'll always be lazy people, of course, but I do believe only a small percentage of those we see behaving like that actually do it because that's what they like to do.

On the other hand, if a week of work just powers you out completely, from whence would you take

Personally, I'd prefer to see a social and economic reevaluation, [one] that just plain leaves you more time and resources to live a more healthy life in the first place.

A "social and economic reevaluation"? That's a revolution. Usually it involves a lot of warfare and death. But feel free to reevaluate your own life, nobody is stopping you there.

And as far as revolutions go, getting everyone more time or more resources is feasible, but getting everyone BOTH is kind of an impossibility. Who pays for it? I mean, you're essentially arguing that the socio-economic system we currently have should change so that you have to work less and get paid more. That's just a daydream.

This quest for immortality seems a bit ironic to me. Isn't it about getting more quality out of life? Now these scientist propose lengthening our lifespan. To what ends? If your life sucks as it is (to whatever degree), why lengthen it?

What I'm proposing is making what we've got more enjoyable so there'll be a SENSE in lengthening it.

Think about it in terms of making code. Biology-wise, we're still on 386 level. What these scientists propose is inventing the 486 and t

Mice bread without an enzyme age prematurely. Injecting them with the enzyme reversed this process. This does not necessarily mean that injecting normal mice with more of the enzyme will have any affect on their ageing.

If scientists can breed humans with mice, creating mice-men, this idea has potential. I think Monty Python even did a skit on this, where perverts dressed up as mice, and went to parties, where they "squeaked" and passed cheese around.

Definitely an idea that is worthy of a Hollywood B film.

If the mice bread experiments go wrong, we can always pop them into the toaster.

Cells do not normally produce telomerase on their own because not producing it protects against cancer. Turning on the gene that makes telomerase is one of the hurdles pre-cancerous cells have to cross on their way to becoming cancerous.

Also, as someone else pointed out, telomeres are just one aspect of aging. You can induce mice to age prematurely by restricting embryonic expression of telomerase, but that doesn't necessarily mean that mice that age normally will be similarly completely restored by adding it.

There are a number of degenerative diseases (macular degeneration and probably alzheimers) that happen because of inadequate waste removal. No amount of telomerase is going to cause all the little protein fragments lying around to be magically cleaned up and excreted.

Maybe it is dangerous, but if you get to (say) 80+ and can only look forward to a few more years with increasing incontinence and decreasing memory (which may even make up for the incontinence) then it's got to be worth a shot. After all, it's not as if you have much to lose. Though your relatives might not appreciate the loss of any expected inheritance, and the nursing homes have a vested interest in it failing, and the whole pension / insurance industry will go broke overnight. However, if it means I co

*chuckle* Is there anything about this that's wrong? Biology, particularly low-level biochemistry is an area of science that I pay a lot of attention to.

Though, I also take your point, and I will try to have a less decisive tone in the future. I've noticed that people tend to be less questioning than they should of "The Voice Of Authority", and so it's something I try to only use when I'm nearly certain I'm right. But you are correct that this isn't my field and so I should take that into account.

Actually Aging was not reversed. It was made faster in the first place. And then telomerase was added, and aging was normal again.

It's nice. But sometimes it is deactivated for a reason. To stop aging we would have to stop mutating cells. Our cells still would have to divide. Our braincells would still be more or less limited. So we would have to control our tumours while getting more stupid. The biblical 120 max won't be broken any time soon.

I think 100+ years spent in a tin can with other people is something that has such an incredibly high chance of causing extreme psychological issues that I would not agree to send them, volunteers or not. And it raises a whole host of ethical issues as well, such as whether the travelers would have some right to kill one another if they perceived a threat or what to do with some immortal space traveling hero should he try to return to society and be utterly unable to reintegrate, similar to how a lot of ex

They've already done this with dolphins. It involves feeding them seagulls. Unfortunately, the lead scientist was arrested when he stepped across a lion sleeping in the doorway to the lab, after catching a few seagulls.

The charge: transporting gulls across a staid lion for immortal porpoises.

Telomerase activation shouldn't give you cancer. First of all, your telomeres won't be a problem untill you are in the 700-800 year range (if I remember my undergrad genetics courses correctly). At least, outside of the white blood cell lineages, those will probably go for most people in the first 100 years - they could probably use some telomerase. OK, so lets say you would normally get cancer by the time you were 150, thankfully, your white blood cells stop functioning so well around age 90 and you die of pneumonia instead. Now, lets assume the other causes of aging are fixed, so, that's pretty much the standard.

Insert telomerase. You now live to 150, and die of cancer. Did the telomerase give you cancer? No, it just allowed you to live long enough for the factors that did give you cancer to take hold.

You do have cells in your body producing telomerase - the gamete producing lineage. You can trace telomerase back to the development of successful linear DNA from that lineage - without break. No cancer. Telomerase is a DNA stabilizing agent, not a mutagen.

Telomerase activation doesn't "give" you cancer, but the lack of telomerase in most of our tissues is an important block to cancer. All cancers must find a way around the problem that telomerase solves - the incremental loss of genetic material with each successive cell division. Telomerase is not necessary or sufficient to cause cancer (they may also end up with cyclized chromosomes), but its control is likely tied to control of cancer.

death is the only thing that prevents humans from creating greater damage than they already do. death regulates us.

it would be nice if our culture was less afraid of death and started to accept it - it's natural and part of everything. not that one should kill himself or suffer, or things like that, but eventually we all do die. in other civilizations death was not something they would fear, and they would live more happily regarding this.

death is the only thing that prevents humans from creating greater damage than they already do. death regulates us.

it would be nice if our culture was less afraid of death and started to accept it - it's natural and part of everything. not that one should kill himself or suffer, or things like that, but eventually we all do die. in other civilizations death was not something they would fear, and they would live more happily regarding this.

True, i don't want to be mourned when i finally get slammed into the furnace, i want my life to be celebrated with food & booze and music (heck, even get some hookers!), remember people for their life, not their death (unless it was a spectacular death).

death is the only thing that prevents humans from creating greater damage than they already do.

Regardless, we'd breed more of the same (look at North Korea, Iran or even the US). Death or no death, humans do what humans do. I for one see ageing as unnatural. Growing, yes, but ageing is something we should be able to cure.

I'll sum it up in a simple math expression to make it clearer:
life + death = 1 - 1 = 0
I'd rather stay in 1...and don't anyone give me one of that you live forever through memories crap.
From my point of reference the world seizes to exist when I die since there will no more be a point of reference.

What you are saying is that you want to see a movie of reality as opposed to living through it, you want to see the long term result of where the civilization is going. It's interesting of-course, but you are missing something:

1. If everybody decided to do the same thing, the reality would be filled with vats full of people, waking up every 100 years, looking at each other and going back to sleep.

The obvious choice would be to limit the number of offspring to 1/person (or 2 per woman, since that would be easier). Transgressors could be sentenced to a fine + sterilisation or something. The birth deficit could be handled by auction, lottery, or some queue-based scheme.

... it might take a while, but after some time you'll wish you died (the kicker would be off course if at this point you no longer can), the mind grows numb with boredom.

I'm pretty sure this shot doesn't prevent a bullet to the brain from being fatal. Accidental death, suicide, and murder will simply become the way people die instead of withering like an over-ripe grape and simply losing the will to live like people do now. I daresay death from old age is NOT one of the top three ways to die today.

I don't consider this to make people to last forever, but 'unnecessarily long'.

What do you consider a necessary duration? And necessary for what? There is no objective purpose to life - people have to ascribe their own subjective meaning - whatever you think is necessary during your own life is you own subjective value judgement and doesn't apply to anyone else.

we are 'out-breeding' our ability to be able produce enough food... putting more people on this rock with drastically increased lifespans don't seem to be sch a bright idea to me.

This is a potential problem, but it presumes that technology won't be able to keep up with demand. There is mounting economic pressure (which makes all the difference) to create a renewable infrastructure now. It's only a matter of time. The more people there are, the greater the pressure. People would be able to work for longer, and would be under less pressure to have kids early. There is a large degree of self-correction to the situation, but it's one of those difficult to predict scenarios, becuase it's such a collosal global game-changing event.

Besides, think a bit what it would be like to live forever, it's a nightmare.

I honestly have never understood this attitude. People say it, but never give a reason. Why? You say you love life, so when would that change for you? At what point do you become effectively suicidal? Are you anticipating an afterlife?

I say, let nature take it's course, there are more important issue's at hand then to postpone the death (whether or not this is permanent or not) of humans isn't one of them.

Postponement of death is just as natural as anything else that happens in the universe.

This fear of death is not healthy, it prevents you to fully enjoy life itself, and that's a shame, because you only get one shot at it.

And that's what it really boils down to. Any attempt to improve your life and "fully enjoy life itself" by avoiding the massive suck that is dying of old age, is a "fear" of death.

You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to set foot on worlds other than Earth. I'd like to meet some of the other inhabitants of this universe. I'd like to change myself into truly alien forms, experience life and the universe in ways that I

Says you. I actually work in the field, and we have well more than enough technology, raw seed stock, and modified seed stock, to feed this planet fifty times over for the next twenty generations.

"our main energy source is finite (oil), and our climate seems to be going through changes (i don't care if they're man-made or not),"

These actually pose real problems that we must work upon.

"putting more people on this rock with drastically increased lifespans don't seem to be sch a bright idea to me."

Well, odds are this would only be available to those that could afford it, while the general masses die off. While this leaves a lower population to sustain the planetary population overall, there's also a lower planetary population to handle. Thinking of a worst-case scenario, this would be like giving those hard working and intelligent enough a pass at a super-long life, while eliminating the unwashed masses. That poses another problem, but everything is a problem, and in truth nothing is a total solution.

"Besides, think a bit what it would be like to live forever, it's a nightmare."

People, who are short-lived, do not care about the long term consequences. It's like politicians, who are elected only for a few years and all they try to do is to get reelected, they don't care about actually working that much. Same with non-owners of corporations, who are nevertheless on top of them, like seagull CEOs for example, they come in, make a lot of noise, crap all over the place, collect the severance and leave.

People who live longer than our very limited life-spans, and people who have more active life-styles by being healthier, would probably end up thinking a bit more long-term, which may end up being good for the population in the long run.

I do not buy the argument that the natural order of things is GOOD. I think the natural order is actually pretty bad, considering that evolution basically cares about procreation first of all, doesn't care about your quality of life past certain age-point, so it elects the traits in populations that are better suited for the young people, not for those who are maybe 20 years older than 'the young'. But in today's society being 20 years older than 'the young' also has a positive effect (well, with some). They are experienced, they are very knowledgeable and specialized, they are trained, a lot of resources went to their training, they are still useful, but their health is deteriorating and they do become an increasing burden.

If this particular treatment prolongs the life of people by say 40 years, yet makes them younger in the process, it would end up as a net positive for society, because those resources would be available longer and without the downside of being sicker.

Basically sign me up (I am almost sure I will never see this treatment, but I would like to.)

- what does that even mean? Is the 'mice-kind' better? Is 'wheat-kind' excellent?

Is 'frog-kind' the king?

Good from whose perspective? AFAIC I don't care much about definitions of good and bad here, but I do care about quality of life for myself and people I know at least (and the people I don't know are on a very very distant third there.)

I don't know what it means for you - 'good', but I do know that I don't particularly care about opinions of others when it comes to quality of life. The better the qualit

In the future: We can carry on with our fixed population size, imposed via whatever methods are "acceptable" and we will have options:

hate that I have to keep pointing this out, but clinical immortality will not lead to overpopulation, as counter-intuitive as that statement sounds, regardless of whether we limit our reproduction as a matter of public policy.

I'll break it down into three scenarios, in order of most to least likely. All three are based around methods for extending the human lifespan. In the first scenario, let's imagine a world where telomerase treatments reverse or mitigate cellular ageing.

Now, to begin with, this isn't "immortality", even in the ageless sense, as there would still be terminal illnesses and cumulative damage. Lifespans would increase, but would not be infinite. Cancer would probably beat out all other natural causes put together. So, let's say the average lifespan is a century or two.

The window of opportunity for having kids would remain mostly where it is now. This is because gametes age and run out regardless of the ageing going on in your other bodily tissues. A woman is born with a finite number of eggs, and they have an best-before date that has nothing to do with telomeres. Men would stay fertile longer, though not indefinitely, but the population growth rate is capped by the number of fertile females, not males.

Thus, the most likely scenario for anti-ageing drugs would not affect the rate of population growth rate, and would only increase the average lifespan by a limited margin. Given that the developed world is already at or below replacement level fertility, this would not pose a problem for the global population. And the developing world would need to modernize before they could implement this kind of medical care regardless, so they would probably also see a decline in growth to match our own, if history is any precedent.

Now, a second scenario would be perfect clinical immortality. No disease is terminal, no age related damage irreversible, no injury permanent. People only die traumatic deaths, whether by accident, violence or suicide.

The population still wouldn't skyrocket. People in the western world put off having kids already, generally waiting as long as natural fertility allows. How long would we put off having kids if we had no biological clock counting down? Decades? Centuries? A long time, regardless.

People still wouldn't live forever either. I've seen estimate that state that if death by old age vanished tomorrow, the average life expectancy would work out to about 300-500 years. Might be less if suicide became a common cause of death. And while the population might level out, the growth rate would slow to a crawl.

Now, the final option would be complete immortality. To accomplish this, we'd need to be able to make backups, against the risk of traumatic death. The mechanism for backing up a human being would almost certainly entail whole brain uploading.

With the capacity to upload brains comes the capacity to live without bodies. Overpopulation becomes supremely irrelevant if many or most of us live inside virtual worlds. And as far as that goes, given how technologically unlikely this scenario is, who's to say we'd even need Earth at this stage?

I read a book titled "Mortal Questions", by a philosophy professor named Thomas Nagel. In one of the chapters, he argued part of living is also dying. So to die is to "complete the totality of your existence."

In my own experience, my father was old and sick, and he realized that it was time for him to go. Of course, my sister and I didn't want to accept it, but now when we talk about it, we realize how courageous and humble he was.

When the father of my mother-in-law died, my father-in-law said that it was probably a good thing, because he was old and suffering. He lost a foot in World War II, which caused medical complications throughout his life. My mother-in-law threw a tantrum, and screamed "No one wants to die!"

It's a difficult question, to ask folks if they accept death. Some would answer, When you gotta go, you gotta go!" Others do want to live forever.

I was always impressed when I visited the homes of people from Vietnam. They had a little corner in the room with pictures of ancestors that had died, with incense sticks around.

After our father died, my sister put a lot of work into scanning old slides taken by my father, with his beloved Leica, and burning them on a CD for his grandchildren. If the memory of you is passed on through generations, you do live forever.

all of this has already been anticipated. The Harvard people are closing in on a substance called boosterspice. It stops people from aging. Next will come what will be known as birthright lottery. It will control the population number while at the same time breeding lucky people.

The only downside will be that you will not be allowed to breed unless you are super smart or super athletic or artistic. However this will not be a problem for most slashdotters since we weren't gonna breed anyways.

I don't want to live forever. I'd rather die eventually, but the years I'm alive, I want to live them fully.

I don't want to age. I don't care if my life ends at 80 or 90 or 150, I want those years, every last one of them, to be spent without sitting in a hospice as a drooling vegetable.
I'd rather get tired of living than spend most of my life on the sliding slope away from the heights of my youth.

When they come to take me away when I'm 150, I'll say good bye to the cruel world, the cruel bedsheets a

I think having people who live forever (or a few centuries at least) would do a lot of good for the world. Several reasons:

People who plan to live 500 years can't afford to fuck up the environment. Normal people may vote for a bad policy because the consequences in 50 years are far away and they'll probably be dead anyway. But if you plan to be around and healthy in 100 years from now, you've got to give long term plans some more thought. The exhaustion of oil would be well within one's expected lifetime.